Video tutorials for the Coq proof assistant

Next week I am going to a meeting where I am supposed to give a tutorial on the Coq proof assistant. Inspired by the Catsters, I decided to prepare the material in the form of screencasts. You can find the first few tutorials on Youtube in my “Coq tutorials” playlist. So far I have:

You should turn on the high quality HD stream when you watch these. Feedback is welcome (and easy to provide on Youtube). I find it very, very difficult to listen to my own voice. I hope to have many more lectures soon, but I am starting to feel out of my depth, so if anyone wants to help they are welcome!

I am making screencasts with Screenium on my Mac, which is just one of many available options. Preparation of a screencast takes less time than preparation of equivalent written notes or slides, as long as one is not obsessed with making everything perfect. In fact, I think it is important not to make tutorials perfect. In a screencast the viewer can see how I make mistakes and, more importantly, how I discover and fix them. It still takes me two or three takes before I am happy with a screencast, but all in all the process is becoming more streamlined with each next tutorial.

I have learnt a couple of tricks. The “pause” button is my friend when the phone rings or I need to think for a moment what to say next. It takes less time to start over than to try to edit out mistakes afterwards. A screen cast must be short. There must be a central message, but often I find it convenient to explain “on the side” various details which do not easily fit anywhere.

Somehow the whole process feels organic. There is less global planning than in teaching a course, but some planning is still needed. There are non-traditional ways of organizing tutorials into playlists. For example, other people can combine screencasts from various sources and create their own tracks. I think there is a lot of potential.

Screencasts are ok for computer-sciency themes, such as Coq and programming, but for real math, I will have to make videos of handwriting. The Catsters stand in front of a blackboard in their videos, but I would like to try pencil and paper with our departmental document camera. We will see how that goes.

I have experimented with videos too, in particular with video/slideshow hybrids. The idea is that some people don’t like watching videos because they are hard to skim and navigate. Feel free to drop me a line in case you’d like to “steal” anything, I’m happy to make this open source etc.

For real math, a pen tablet works quite well; I simply copied the style of Khan Academy. The 90€ purchase is easily justified with the observation that “professional mathematicians need professional tools”. I think that blackboard or paper don’t work so well because the visual quality tends to be rather poor. CCD noise, compression artifacts etc. That said, it is a tad easier for me to do nice handwriting on paper.

Concerning hearing your own voice, I have found that applying an audio plugin that simulates light reverb / room ambience can help.

Note that the Bamboo Fun has (had?) two different sizes: a smaller S version and a larger M version. (The website only shows the larger version.) I bought the smaller version, whose pen sensitive area has the size of a postcard. If I were to buy again and if I had sufficient funds, I would buy the larger version, though, because that leaves more room for handwriting.